{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_archetype_breadth150_20260804","research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_light_prior_art_20260804","cell_id":"backcasting_pathway_design__accounting_auditing","search_lanes":{"direct_problem_and_intervention":{"queries":["\"evidence-ready close\" accounting","\"audit-ready close\" \"backcasting\"","financial close \"dependency map\" audit evidence","financial close \"reverse planning\" source-to-report lineage"],"source_ids":["SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"],"no_result_note":"No opened source described the complete intervention combining an accounting-specific evidence-ready endpoint, backcasting, explicit prerequisite dependencies, endpoint-traceable present commitments, and sampled-close assumption review."},"synonyms_and_historical_terms":{"queries":["financial close audit readiness evidence lineage reconciliation official guidance","record-to-report audit trail source-to-ledger reconciliation evidence","continuous close audit evidence contemporaneous documentation","backcasting preferred future reverse engineering pathways workshop"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"],"no_result_note":null},"products_practices_and_standards":{"queries":["site:pcaobus.org AS 1105 audit evidence information produced by company accuracy completeness","site:deloitte.com financial close process future state data controls governance","site:blackline.com products financial close management audit trail reconciliations","financial close management controls supporting documentation transaction drill-down"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3"],"no_result_note":null},"component_combination":{"queries":["backcasting dependency mapping financial reporting controls","future-state financial close upstream prerequisites audit evidence","financial close dependency graph owners exceptions audit trail","preferred future workshop pathways present actions accounting close"],"source_ids":["SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"],"no_result_note":"The components are established separately, but no retained source joined them using the proposal's commitment-admissibility rule."}},"sources":[{"source_id":"SRC1","title":"AS 1105: Audit Evidence","publisher":"Public Company Accounting Oversight Board","url":"https://pcaobus.org/oversight/standards/auditing-standards/details/AS1105","source_type":"OFFICIAL_STANDARD","claims_supported":["Audit evidence must be sufficient, relevant, and reliable to support the auditor's opinion.","Reliability of company-produced electronic information depends partly on controls over that information.","Auditors must test the accuracy and completeness of company-produced information, or test relevant controls, and evaluate its precision and detail.","Evidence reliability depends on its source, circumstances, and controls over document conversion and maintenance."]},{"source_id":"SRC2","title":"Controllership and Financial Close and Consolidation","publisher":"Deloitte","url":"https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/programs/center-for-controllership/articles/controllership-and-financial-close.html","source_type":"TRADE_PROFESSIONAL","claims_supported":["Close improvement already encompasses standardized data, automated reconciliations, mapping logic, system architecture, governance, controls, ownership, and access.","The guidance recommends documenting current state, current technical architecture, future use cases, present challenges, and future needs.","Fragmented data sources and manual reconciliation are identified as impediments to financial-close efficiency and transparency."]},{"source_id":"SRC3","title":"Financial Close Management Software","publisher":"BlackLine","url":"https://www.blackline.com/products/financial-close/","source_type":"FIRST_PARTY_PRODUCT","claims_supported":["An existing commercial suite integrates reconciliations, transaction-level monitoring, supporting documentation, task workflows, controls, validations, role-based signoffs, segregation of duties, and audit trails.","The product supports drill-down from financial statements to transactional details and earlier close commentary.","Existing tooling therefore covers many operational elements of the proposed evidence-ready condition and exception-based close management."]},{"source_id":"SRC4","title":"Unfogging the Future: Ways to Start Exploring the Future","publisher":"UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory","url":"https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/615447e1e90e077a2cbdf420/Dstl_Unfogging_the_Future_v7_FINAL_RGB_ONLINE_VERSION.pdf","source_type":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","claims_supported":["Backcasting is an established method that works backward from a preferred future to identify required steps, sequence, and timing.","The guidance describes workshops comparing the preferred future with today and identifying pathways and present actions.","Backcasting can clarify participants, controllable boundaries, work scope, and expectations, while requiring careful facilitation to avoid collapsing into ordinary roadmapping."]}],"problem_evidence":{"status":"PARTLY_SUPPORTED","finding":"The problem's general substrate is visible: authoritative audit standards require reliable, accurate, complete, sufficiently detailed evidence, while close-practice and product sources address fragmented data, manual reconciliation, mappings, ownership, controls, supporting documentation, transaction drill-down, and audit trails. The retained sources do not establish how often support is reconstructed after inquiry or that missing prerequisite chains are the dominant cause of audit friction.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3"]},"closest_prior_art":[{"name":"Deloitte close-process transformation practices","source_ids":["SRC2"],"overlap":"Documents current state and architecture, considers future needs, and addresses data standards, mappings, reconciliations, governance, controls, ownership, access, and close-process improvement.","remaining_difference":"It does not require backward derivation of an explicit prerequisite chain from line-item evidence conditions or restrict present commitments to actions traceable through that chain."},{"name":"BlackLine Financial Close Management","source_ids":["SRC3"],"overlap":"Operationalizes reconciliations, transaction monitoring, supporting documentation, exception handling, close tasks, controls, signoffs, segregation of duties, drill-down, and audit trails.","remaining_difference":"It manages and automates close workflows but does not describe the proposed future-endpoint backcast, condition-based reverse milestones, or sampled review of pathway assumptions."},{"name":"Dstl backcasting workshop method","source_ids":["SRC4"],"overlap":"Starts with a preferred future, compares it with today, and works backward in a workshop to identify pathways, actions, sequencing, timing, stakeholders, and control boundaries.","remaining_difference":"It is domain-general and lacks the source-to-report accounting evidence model, artifact-tested prerequisite relationships, exception and retention conditions, and auditor-independence boundary."}],"prior_art_disposition":"ADJACENT_PRIOR_ART","contrastive_claim_remaining":"For one material account and closed period, requiring every provisional present commitment to trace through an explicit, artifact-testable prerequisite chain to specified evidence-ready close conditions will reveal at least one supported unmet upstream condition not explicitly represented in the existing close calendar, conventional close-transformation assessment, or close-management platform.","contrastive_claim_falsifier":"The claim is falsified if the existing plan or tooling already represents the complete tested prerequisite chain, or if the workshop produces only known tasks and dates, identifies no sample-supported unmet upstream condition, yields dependencies contradicted by the artifacts, or cannot define an endpoint without prejudging the external auditor's evidence decisions.","gates":{"adequate_source_search":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"The bounded search covered direct phrases, synonyms and older terminology, standards and products, and combinations of backcasting, dependency mapping, evidence lineage, close controls, and ownership. Exactly four opened sources from four publishers include an official standard, official guidance, and a first-party product source.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"]},"supported_problem":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"The sources support the need for controlled, reliable audit evidence and show that close practice must address fragmented data, mappings, reconciliations, documentation, ownership, access, controls, and audit trails. The specific causal and prevalence claims remain only partly supported.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3"]},"distinct_testable_claim":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"The remaining contrast can be tested by observing whether explicit endpoint-to-prerequisite derivation finds a supported unmet condition absent from current planning and tooling.","source_ids":["SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"]},"bounded_next_test":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"The proposed test is limited to one already-closed period, one account, ten approved samples, a 90-minute read-only workshop, fifteen conditions, three provisional actions, and artifact ratings within five business days. It has explicit rejection criteria and requires no production change.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4"]},"no_obvious_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"A management-owned, read-only mapping exercise has no obvious stop if access, privacy, retention, change-control, and segregation requirements are preserved and the external auditor independently determines audit procedures, evidence sufficiency, and conclusions. The stated exclusions prohibit record alteration, backdating, production deployment, and auditor control design.","source_ids":["SRC1"]}},"screen_survival":true,"world_novelty_boundary":"This bounded public-web screen found established close transformation, integrated close and audit-trail tooling, and workshop-based backcasting, but no opened source containing the proposal's full structural combination or commitment-admissibility rule. The result supports only an adjacent-prior-art classification and a bounded comparative test; it does not establish world novelty, patentability, market size, expert acceptance, or realized value."}